The Legendary Junkmaster

When Captain Anderson woke up the following day, he expected to see Jason's sleeping figure in the other bed. However, his ears were instead assaulted by the sound of Jason still working away! 'Damn that kid! Has been up all night?' 

He clambered out of bed and headed into the kitchen that was installed in this testing area first. He fixed up some morning breakfast that consisted of the hot beverage that the people around the base called coffee and some cold meat sandwiches. 

Captain Anderson took his time to enjoy the food and drink while the fogginess in his mind was slowly swept away by the coffee. 'I'm wasting so much time with this kid.' He sighed as he stared into his now empty mug. 'He's never going to pass it. I don't even know why the brass even bothers with this test in the first place.'

He shook his head as he washed the plate in the working sink before fixing himself a second mug of coffee to see him through the next hour or so. Captain Anderson then decided that it was time to check up on Jason's progress. After all, he was rather curious as to what the youth thought was the correct answer.

Those who did not give up the moment they looked at the machine were usually evaluated highly. If they then looked through everything without tinkering with it, they would gain more points. However, to pass the test, they then just had to make it to the end of the time limit without giving up on looking for an answer.

This was an endurance and perseverance test, after all. Nobody was expected to pass it. They just had to show sound working principles and the drive to succeed. However, they would fail if they tried to fix the water purification system with some botched idea that had no value.

Captain Anderson chuckled as he thought about how many arrogant researchers had been crushed over the years by this test because they could not handle failing at anything. Every one of them felt that they were the chosen one! And Jason appeared no different than the rest of them in that regard.

He placed his hot mug down on the desk in the observation booth before sliding into the chair and glancing down into Jason's workspace. 'What the fuck is that!'

He immediately stood straight back up as his eyes wandered over the partially built components of Jason's new and original system that he was working on! Captain Anderson could not make heads nor tails of what it was supposed to be or even how it was supposed to be operated!

There was a noticeable lack of mechanical components, and everything seemed like it was supposed to channel the water through several large boxes. Captain Anderson could not contain himself as he rushed out of the booth to get a better look at Jason's work. 

"Oh! Morning Captain! Is it that time already?" Jason called down from where he was perched between two pipes in the system.

"What is all of this?" The Captain shouted back as they started to become flustered.

The cause for that reaction was that he was currently stuck watching as Jason cut a massive hole in one of the pipes that fed water into the purification system. 'Oh, come on! I'm the one that's going to have to fix that when you fail!' The Captain groaned internally as Jason nonchalantly began to cut a hole in the second pipe.

"This? Oh, it's nothing right now. But wait until I'm finished! I've still got to cut away that section there so I can fit my invention into the existing system, but I still have some other parts to complete as well." Jason's head bobbed up and down as he pointed to a part of the machine that housed some critical components.

Captain Anderson felt like he was about to have a heart attack when Jason pointed to that section and talked about butchering it. That kind of damage would take him months of work to fix and replace the parts that Jason would destroy! If he could, then he would have stopped the test here and now and tossed Jason out before he could give him even more work to do!

"Listen, kid! Don't you think you should take a break or something? You know… Get some sleep and all that?" Captain Anderson shouted back in what he believed to be his best persuasive voice that he could manage.

"I'm fine! Thanks for asking, though! If I don't push on now, then I might not finish this by the deadline!" Jason's tone was eerily chipper as he manhandled the pipe in his hand and finished off cutting out the hole in it. "Oh, Captain? Can you pass that up to me?"

By this point, Captain Anderson felt defeated in his heart. He warily handed up the end of a cubic shaped steel channel which Jason proceeded to insert into the purification system's old one. Jason smiled as he heard the water run down his own track instead of the old one.

'Looks like we got the placement right. Now we just need to see how the plants are looking.' Jason hopped down to the ground and raced over to one of the large steel boxes connected to the channel that he had just been fiddling with. 

His hands trembled in excitement as he undid the clasp that kept the lid of the box shut. With a swift movement, he opened it up in time to see the water just starting to invade the boxes interior! 

There was a long, deep container on either wall of the box. Both of them were filled with the soil that Jason had requested while yellow coloured flowers hung over the edge to scrape the box's floor. Jason smiled as he grabbed a glass beaker and held it up to the box's exit. Soon, the water from the old pipe had washed over and pushed its way through the plants' petals to end up in Jason's glass beaker!

"Bottom's up!"